Gorky, Maksim

orig. Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov

(born March 28, 1868, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia—died June 14, 1936, Nizhny Novgorod) Russian writer. After a childhood of poverty and misery (his assumed name, Gorky, means “bitter”), he became a wandering tramp. His early works offered sympathetic portrayals of the social dregs of Russia; they include the outstanding stories “Chelkash” (1895) and “Twenty-Six Men and a Girl” (1899) and the successful play The Lower Depths (1902). For his revolutionary activity, he spent the years 1906–13 abroad as a political exile. His works include the autobiographical trilogy My Childhood (1913–14), In the World (1915–16), and My Universities (1923). Though initially an open critic of Vladimir Ilich Lenin and the Bolsheviks, after 1919 he cooperated with Lenin's government. He lived in Italy from 1921 to 1928. Upon his return to the U.S.S.R., he became the undisputed leader of Soviet writers. When the Union of Soviet Writers was established in 1934, he became its first president and helped establish Socialist Realism. He died suddenly while under medical treatment, possibly killed on the orders of Joseph Stalin.